My wife Tetiana was working at a local mental health clinic when she told her colleagues – a cry for help? – that she was married to a Conservative councillor. What was their reaction? Spontaneous applause? Pat on the back? I’m afraid not. Reader – they gasped. And not in a good way.
Not like the audience at that theatre in Worthing when they heard that Dolly Parton had moved on to that final island in the stream. That was true shock at the sudden loss of someone who’d made the world a better place. A reaction 99.9999 per cent of politicians crave like a peperami.
There are no lengths to which we won’t go to be popular. Having a beer in the pub. Shopping in a supermarket. Taking the bus. Jogging. That kind of thing. As long as there’s a camera. If newly minted prime ministers want to burnish their diplomatic credentials they head off for Ukraine toot sweet. Imagine the gasp of confusion that greeted Andy Burnham when he stepped off the train in Kyiv. Not the looming figure of Frankenstein – Sir Keir – but the diminutive, black-suited figure of Andy Capp. They must have done a double take. Had their man picked up the wrong man at the Polish border?
The most plausible explanation is that, like James Bond or Doctor Who, British prime ministers regenerate when a certain number of British licence fee payers get jailed – I mean bored. There was that joker Sylvester ‘Boris’ McCoy for a couple of years. Paul ‘Truss’ McGann who no one remembers. When I was a boy, there was the posh one – Peter ‘Call me Dave’ Davison. It was often confusing when Theresa May was PM – or was it Jodie Whittaker? And now we’re onto Christopher ‘Andy’ Eccleston. How long will he last?
This constant changing of leaders must be doing Zelensky’s head in. Just as he’s been dumped by one, along comes another. I can see Zelensky – as Andy Capp-Christopher Eccleston-Andy Burnham comes sauntering up to shake his hand – whistling Dolly’s best song “here you come again just when I've begun to get myself together”. Burnham’s even mirroring Zelensky like a mini-me with his black suits. “All you gotta do is smile that smile and there go all my defences” – all too true in Kyiv’s case.
If giving speeches and handing over blueprints for missiles doesn’t get you far enough, whip out your guitar. Did Andy play something uplifting for the Ukrainian soldiers? Something they’d have heard of like Dolly’s 9-5? “9 to 5, for service and devotion you would think that I would deserve a fair promotion want to move ahead, but the boss won't seem to let me I swear sometimes that man is out to get me, mm.” Not enough water’s gone under the bridge for that one.
No. Instead he played some miserable ditty by The Smiths about gangland violence: “The last night of the fair, by the big wheel generator, A boy is stabbed and his money is grabbed” – just an ordinary night in Manchester. If Andy has to play The Smiths, I suppose “Rusholm Ruffians” is more fitting than “The Queen is Dead” or “Meat is Murder” – no point trying to woo Green voters in Kyiv. “Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty” might have been appropriate: “Take me back to dear old Blighty! Put me on the train for London town take me over there drop me anywhere Birmingham, Leeds, or Manchester, well, I don't care!” Except Andy wouldn’t be seen dead anywhere except Manchester.
There’s a Doctor Who for our times, and there are pop songs for our times. In the 1970s, there was the Sex Pistols and “Anarchy in the UK”. Dolly Parton’s 9-5 represented the 80s. How times have changed.
“Tumble out of bed and I stumble to the kitchen pour myself a cup of ambition”. Tell that to the 6.5 million on out-of-work benefits.
“Out on the street, the traffic starts jumpin' with folks like me on the job from 9 to 5” – no such luxury as working from home back then.
Some things never change: “Workin' 9 to 5, what a way to make a livin' barely gettin' by, it's all takin' and no givin” As sung by HMRC’s in-house choir.
And there are politicians for our times. Take Ange, her beauty beyond compare with her flaming locks of auburn hair, singing to her constituents about her coats of many colours – from Reiss, Ted Baker and Emilia Wickstead (£1995). Poverty is all in the head, she sings: “And I tried to make them see that one is only poor only if they choose to be”. Her mama definitely didn’t make her coats. But we will always love you Ange.
Alistair McNair is Leader of the Conservatives on Brighton & Hove City Council.
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